April 2 7, 19 22
HERBERT WITHERSPOON.
proved the wisdom of the old school and have not invented in any way a new vocal method.
I find a deplorable lack of instruction in matters of what we call diction and pronunciation and their relation to the real singing tone, and the same deplorable lack of instruction in the simple, natural and healthy method of breathing and breath control. Theories advocated and taught broadcast are false, have no basis in fact, and accomplish nothing but ill results, and modern fads of so-called voice placing and exaggeration of peculiar kinds of resonances have only contributed their share to the ruin of voices and to the inability to sing high notes with comfort to the singer and pleasure to the audience.
It seems to me that the degeneration in the art of singing is due to two chief causes—first, to the unwillingness of pupil and teacher to go through the simple natural technical study necessary for the development of the perfect scale, even range, and the healthy, free, natural emission of tone, and, secondly, to the lack of study of the classical repertory. Nobody can become a great singer by the study of only exaggerated modern music or cheap sentimental ballads. If one is going to develop the real art of singing, he must study the repertory of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so that he will develop the voice as an instrument, train his mind as a musician, and thereby develop not only his physical voice, but his imagination, his sense of proportion, good taste, style and the kind of authority in art which gives him a commanding place in the world.
Feeling as strongly as I do about these matters and about the necessity for the spread of these ideas, I have put myself in touch with organizations outside of my own. For instance, I am going to Ithaca because I believe that these principles can do good and because I believe we can develop the vocal department at the Ithaca Conservatory of Music in such a fashion as to produce results worth while.
I hope to do_ the same thing in other conservatories or colleges, and I am training many teachers with this in view, so that our ideas may be carried as broadcast as possible.
People have asked me how I could find time to go to Ithaca, in view of the great amount of work demanding attention at home. I go to Ithaca but once a month, teaching in classes as I do in New York, as well as a few private lessons, and I depend upon teachers like John Quine, whom I have placed there, to carry on my work during the time when I cannot be there. The results have been so encouraging that I have been well repaid for my trouble, and I believe Mr. Williams and Mr. Egbert are going to make a great conservatory out of their present plant.
History teaches us that there is always after every war a period of utmost confusion and uncertainty, founded largely upon a kind of demoralization which destroys the love of work for the sake of the work itself.
In our own case in America, thousands of men made two or three times their usual salaries or profits and the spirit of get-rich-quick spread throughout the land in such a fashion as to make money the chief object and not the real interest in the work which one was doing.
It is. not surprising to find the same spirit in the artistic efforts of the day. I have recently talked with several of the great men of the country, manufacturers, college presidents and other educators, and I have not been surprised to hear them all express the same opinion about the lack of efficiency and the lack of real ambition in work. One great manufacturer told me, for instance, that he calculated that efficiency had gone down just about in proportion as wages went up. One college president told me, in no uncertain terms, that the average efficiency of the college student had gone down 33r/j per cent.
I feel that we have all noticed the same thing in the students of singing or of other branches of music. We say that such is the spirit in the air, but there must be some definite cause. The main thing now is to conquer it by giving pupils every possible encouragement and inducement toward serious, painstaking work, which will give them a solid foundation for their future careers. That is the reason why I have above called particular attention to the fact that the so-called specialization in all branches of work has gone too far.
I do not believe any singer can become a great 'singer by mere attention to some kind of technical, physical method. The singer is an artist. If he is not that by nature, he will never succeed, no matter how much so-called technic he may acquire. His study׳ of technic must go hand in hand with the development of his imagination and of his art. so that both may be developed proportionately to each other.
Our singing teachers therefore should be men and women who are primarily artists and who recognize that the correct technic of singing is a very simple matter, which must be developed not ohly in a mechanical way, but in an inspirational and imaginative way. In other words, they must (Continued, on page 57)
12	MUSICAL COURIER
HERBERT WITHERSPOON COMPARES PROBLEMS OF
STUDENTS OF TODAY WITH THOSE OF YEARS AGO
"In All Branches of Life Today We Have Been Specialized to Death," He Declares—The Causes of This "Degeneration" —The Necessity of Encouragement and Inducement Toward Serious, Painstaking Work Which Will Give Them a Solid Foundation for Their Future Careers
not being a real musician, and this in only too many׳ cases has been justified.
I have examined, in my visits around the country, pupils who have taken degrees as having graduated from conservatories, who had absolutely no knowledge of the classical repertory. Many facts I could cite would be almost unbelievable. There has been a widespread teaching on the other hand, and it is a curious contradiction, that singers need not go through the same kind of technical training that violinists and pianists are obliged to endure, and need only sing piece after piece until they finally become great singers. This kind of instruction has been supplemented by certain fads and fancies which are supposed to govern the production of tone, but which never work. We may find many reasons for this evolution or degeneration or whatever we may please to call it. We may perhaps trace it to the craze for ultra-realism and exaggeration, the insincere desire “to put it over,” to use present slang, but the reason is not of much importance. The fact remains that singing has degenerated and that we have few, if any׳, great singers to take the place of the old ones who have either died or passed out of their careers.
There seems to be prevalent almost a hatred of real hard persevering daily׳ ,work, and if the period before and during the war has been responsible for this, it is time now that we outgrew it and bent all our energies toward the development of real efficiency again.
Pupils come to me from all over the country who have no knowledge whatsoever of the classics, who have never sung anything of ,Each or Handel or Gluck or Schumann or Schubert, but who have been taught in a most desultory-fashion one or two showy arias, which their technic does not allow them to really sing, and a few commonplace cheap modem songs with a public appeal. The average pupil who comes to me cannot sing even a good scale. They are taught a few rapid, showy exercises, a very few, and their heads are filled with a lot of outlandish ideas about vocal production.
The human voice can be trained to perfection in a manner competent to deal with real music only by the same methods necessary for the training of the violinist or the pianist—that is, by hard, persevering, but simple technical work, based upon the equally simple laws of co-ordination which govern the human voice and the human breathing apparatus.
If we examine the methods in vogue during the periods when great singers were created, we will be surprised at their simplicity rather than at their complex methods. Modern science has contributed much knowledge about the human throat and the human vocal organs, of which very little really concerns the singer. The modern study of phonology has taught us much, on the other hand, about natural tone governed largely by perfect pronunciation, which is of the utmost value to the student, and from this knowledge we have developed a sy'stem of phonetics which can cure many faults and many injured voices, but which, on the other hand, will never teach people to sing, but, as one might say, will only prepare the singer for the study of singing in a natural, healthy manner.
Singing is just the same as any other art. It is partly, and only partly, physical, and largely, very largely, mental and imaginative. I have collected, for instance, a large number of modern fads and fancies of vocal production, which I shall publish in my book and which I am sure will astound the uninitiated. It is surprising that teachers do not study more carefully the old textbooks of exercises and from these draw their own healthy conclusions as to how the great- voices of the past were developed. It is a perfectly simple thing to understand just how the old teachers taught, in spite of the fact that we are told in books and interviews that the old teachers left no record of how they taught. In my opinion they left very definite, concise and simple rules, which, if followed today, will produce just as good results now as they did then, and it is along these lines that I do my work. The voice is developed solely and entirely by means of the same breathing taught at the time of Handel as can be taught today, and by securing by simple, healthy and regular practice a co-ordmation between the’ breath and the vocal organs, which today we understand more thoroughly and more scientifically than ever before; but it is a curious and very encouraging fact that the best investigators of the true physiology of voice have only
I have recently been interested in forming, in my own mind, a comparison between conditions and problems facing the student of today and those faced by the student of twenty-five or thirty years ago. It is interesting to see how conditions, in some ways, have been vastly improved, but how in other ways the gain has either been very slight or perhaps there has been no gain at all. As the desire for exact and definite instruction has increased, the art side of the student’s work has been unfortunately lessened in importance.
In all branches of life of today, we have been specialized to death. This has been unfortunately particularly true of the teaching of singing, and one of the greatest weaknesses to be contended w-ith today is the lack of real artistic work and the study of interpretation and the real message of the singer.
Our pupils for the past decade have been wandering about in search of different vocal methods. Most of the teaching has been conducted upon a purely physical plane, with little or no development of the imagination of the artist. All kinds of methods have been invented and taught, sometimes with a view to showing the singer a quick road to glory and sometimes with a view to giving him exceptional qualities, power or range of voice, but there has been a deplorable lack of cultivation along real musical and artistic lines. The result has been that orchestra conductors and musicians in general have held the singer in contempt as
Olive MARSHALL
SOPRANO
Soloist with
THE ORATORIO SOCIETY
of NEW YORK
“THE MESSIAH״
December 28, 1921
“ST. MATTHEW PASSION״
April 13, 1922
NEW YORK EVENING JOURNAL.
“Sang with a fresh and well resonanced voice and with expressive conviction.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES.
“Most effective in the simpler, devotional passages, characteristic of the work.”
NEW YORK EVENING MAIL.
“Sang the difficult music fluently and in excellent taste.”
NEW YORK TRIBUNE.
“Nothing but praise to be spoken of the work done by Olive Marshall. . . .״״
Exclusive Management: HAENSEL & JONES, Aeolian Hall, New York City